BEIJING - I have tried to access some “sensitive” Web sites—such as the Chinese Web pages of BBC, VOA, Amnesty International, and of course Radio Free Asia (RFA)—during the past few days, but have had no success.

BEIJING - It is sunny when my plane touches down at the new Beijing Airport, but the sky is blanketed with grey smog. The Beijing government has been trying very hard to at least temporarily clean the environment. The result is not obvious.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) today criticized the Chinese government's apparent denial of an entry visa to an Olympic-credentialed RFA broadcaster and called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to press Beijing to honor its pledge to hold the Games in an atmosphere of openness.

A former top Communist Party official has slammed Beijing's hosting of the Olympic Games as being built on the back of corruption and human rights abuses. "In China, we produce miscarriages of justice and trumped-up charges like a high-intensity industrial zone," writes Bao Tong, who is under house arrest at his Beijing home.

Taxis in Beijing and other Chinese cities get high-tech security and surveillance equipment, including live microphones capable of transmitting audio from within the vehicle to a central monitoring station.

Key rights advocates and social activists across China will spend the Olympics confined to their homes under round the clock surveillance. Some have been warned off talking to the media, while others cannot be reached by phone.

Updated on August 1 - China confirms that foreign journalists working out of Olympics press facilities won't have unfettered Internet access, although some sites appear to have been unblocked following international news coverage.

China is struggling with the inflationary effects of its currency policy three years after launching a partial reform. Speculative "hot money" is pouring into the country, while food prices have jumped by over 20 percent so far this year

Chinese citizens hoping to lodge complaints about alleged mistreatment or injustice at the hands of local officials are being tricked into filling in a form at government offices in Beijing and then taken to detention centers to await escort back home.

Chinese authorities in Gulja, which saw an armed crackdown on protests in 1997, are raiding homes in a security campaign they say is aimed at the country's huge migrant population but which activists abroad say targets minority Muslim Uyghurs.

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hubei send a prominent cyber-activist serving a suspended sentence back to jail. Meanwhile, in neighboring Hunan, veteran labor activist Zhang Shanguang vows to continue his human rights work following his release from a 10-year prison sentence.

Three Burmese women who went to work legally in Malaysia are now being held in one of the country's notorious immigration jails after they lodged a complaint of mistreatment and sexual harassment against a co-worker.

North Korea has sent a group of child musicians to Hong Kong on the first stage of a cultural exchange with Chinese counterparts. It’s the first time the Pyongyang Children's Art Group has visited the city. The next stop for the group will be Beijing. Video: AFP

Bereaved parents who lost children when their schools collapsed in the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan have vowed to continue their legal battle after officials refused to publish results of an investigation. Many parents have now signed a compensation deal offered by the government.